Blago Legal Team Still Taking "See What Sticks" Approach
By Chuck Sudo in News on Nov 29, 2011 3:20PM
Former Gov. Rod Blagojevich is one week away from a Dec. 6 sentencing hearing, but his legal team is still filing motions and hearings for Gov. Sound Bite to have a new trial.
Yesterday, Judge James Zagel denied Blagojevich's request to have all the f-ing wiretaps prosecutors have on him played in open court.
Zagel minced no words in chiding Blago's legal team for the last-minute motion and said filing the motion when they had access to it all along was a waste of time.
“The filing of this particular motion at this late date is simply wrongful,” U.S. District Judge James Zagel wrote. “What this motion requests is my blind approval of the use of whatever excerpts it decides are relevant to ‘lack of ill intent’ and admissible under the loosened standards of hearsay at sentencing. That request is denied.”
Zagel also set a Friday hearing to consider what prosecutors say is new evidence about key government witness John Wyma. Wyma served as an informant to prosecutors and assisted in the wiretapping of Blagojevich's phones. Defense lawyers claim prosecutors didn't tell them who approved of the wiretaps so that Wyma could cut a deal to avoid being investigated. Wyma claims he never had a deal with prosecutors.
Team Blago claims the new information on Wyma surfaced during last week's sentencing of former aide and fundraiser Antonin "Tony" Rezko, who received a 10-1/2 year prison sentence last week.